Wednesday, December 4, 2013

As I listened the other day to a politician talk about
ways to strengthen the economy, a thought flitted across my mind: “This guy has
ideas. Maybe he should run for president.”

Ha! OK, I knew the speaker was President Barack Obama.
But after nearly five years in the Oval Office, he still manages to sound like
an outsider who could do great things if only he had the chance.

And that’s why -- with a job approval rating of only
about 40 percent, his signature legislative achievement still under fire and
his agenda in jeopardy -- the president hit the campaign trail. He launched a three-week
push ostensibly to persuade people to sign up for health care online but also to
remind voters why they re-elected him just a year ago.

Naturally, like many another political outsider, Obama
has discovered that middle class frustrations “are at an all-time high.”

The botched rollout of the online health insurance exchanges
didn’t instill confidence in him or the federal government, he concedes, but he
insists that the law will stand and eventually will work just fine. Even so, that
alone won’t cure the middle class malaise that started decades ago, he says.
Malaise, by the way, is my word, not his.

“Their
frustration is rooted in their own daily battles – to make ends meet, to pay
for college, buy a home, save for retirement. It’s rooted in the nagging sense
that no matter how hard they work, the deck is stacked against them. And it’s
rooted in the fear that their kids won’t be better off than they were,” he said.

Candidates of both
parties cozy up to the middle class, of course, but the question is how.
Republicans want government to stand aside. Obama and Democrats believe
government has a role in ensuring equal opportunity.

“A dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility…has
jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain -- that if you work hard, you
have a chance to get ahead,” Obama said
Wednesday at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress, a
left-leaning think tank that has provided several Obama administration
insiders.

He
revived a host of ideas: increase the federal minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour; strengthen
collective bargaining; end the wage disparity between men and women; tighten
the tax code and use the additional revenue to rebuild roads and bridges, extend
preschool to every child, and repeal the across-the-board spending cuts called
the sequester.

“I
believe this is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy
works for every working American…And I know I’ve raised this issue before, and
some will ask why I raise the issue again right now,” he said.

His critics say it’s no mystery, that he’s trying to
change the subject from the health care mess and trying to give Democrats
ground to stand on in next year’s midterm congressional elections. So what?

Obama
and everyone around him have apologized, and the marketplace system finally is
running more smoothly. The elections in 11 months could make or break his last
two years as president. He acknowledged he’s putting out his ideas as a marker.

“I realize we are not
going to resolve all of our political debates over the best ways to reduce
inequality and increase upward mobility this year, or next year, or in the next
five years,” he says.

What’s important is “that we have a serious debate
about these issues. For the longer that current trends are allowed to continue, the more
it will feed the cynicism and fear that many Americans are feeling right now.”

Obama
says he’s willing to work with Republicans. “If Republicans have concrete plans
that will actually reduce inequality, build the middle class, provide more
ladders of opportunity to the poor, let’s hear them…” And so on. “You owe it to
the American people to tell us what you are for, not just what you’re against.”

But
can the battle-scarred Democratic president find common ground with
battle-scarred Republican lawmakers?

House
Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, complains that the House has passed nearly 150
bills that he claims would help the economy, but all have died in the Senate,
which is controlled by Democrats. They include multiple attempts at repealing
the health law.

“When
will they start listening to the American people?” Boehner asks.

It’s
hard to listen when both sides have turned a deaf ear to the other.